Chapter 3 - But You Die (2)

"What?"

"I said I lied. A bluff. Don't you know what that is?"

The Flame Emperor smirked.

"I don't have any skill that detects lies. I was just bluffing to sound the Saintess out. Wow, both you and the Saintess... You're seriously naive. You actually believed me?"

"Th-then..."

My lips trembled. I was in shock.

"You killed the Saintess without being sure of anything?"

The Saintess, the ninth-ranked hero. Unlike the psychopath before me, she was a decent person, a hunter who supposedly donated most of her earnings to orphanages. He'd killed the woman who earned the title Saintess that way just because she seemed a little suspicious?

'If that's true...'

This guy wasn't a once-in-a-generation hunter. He was a once-in-a-generation lunatic.

"Hey, what kind of person do you take me for, saying something that harsh? Of course I'm sure. The Saintess really did try to kill me. If I don't kill her first, she'll poison me to death tomorrow."

The Flame Emperor spat on the street.

"Fuck! Thinking about it again pisses me the fuck off."

"H-how do you know that...?"

"I know everything."

He answered as though it were obvious.

"I just know. I have a way of knowing everything."

"..."

"And you don't need to know what that way is, buddy."

For a moment, I was at a loss for words.

It wasn't just because the Flame Emperor was absurdly confident. There was a certain conviction in his eyes. The conviction that he'd truly had a reason to kill the Saintess. At least, that was how it looked to me.

"Well, seeing as you brought up lie detection, I guess you really are innocent."

"Ah..."

"Come to think of it, I've never seen your face before, either. I memorized the mugs of all the rats lying in wait around here. Eighteen in total. Fucking bastards even picked a fucking fitting head count... Hmm. Anyway, yeah. There wasn't a meek little guy like you among them."

The Flame Emperor touched my head, stroking it. He was smiling.

Had he finally believed that I was innocent?

"Th-thank y—!"

"But you know I'm the Flame Emperor. And you saw me kill the Saintess."

He stroked my head.

"So you'll have to fucking die."

As he stroked it again, the Flame Emperor's hand slowed.

"My name's Yoo Suha. Goodbye."

It happened that instant. My head was hot. No, the inside of my head was hot. For a split second, it just felt like the crown of my head had touched a frying pan. Then my brains abruptly caught fire. They sizzled.

My skull boiled like a drum of oil.

"... Urgh...!"

No words came out. No scream came out, either. When the pain was truly unbearable, a person couldn't even scream.

'Killed by a lunatic like this... So this is how I die.'

Kim Gongja.

The orphanage director had given me that name so I would become as great as Confucius. Instead, I had lived a life nothing like Confucius's and died a pointless death nothing like his.

I was sad.

'Ah.'

If I compared it to a game, it was a shitty game.

To simply call it what it was, it was a ruined life.

A life that had ended in death while still broken.

[You have died.]

I hated it.

[Your death fulfills the skill's activation condition.]

Why did I have to die like this?

No, why had I had to live like this?

It was unfair. I was furious. Everything was just so unfair. I could have lived a little better. It would have been all right for me to live a little better. I deserved that. I'd simply made mistakes. Today, I'd made three mistakes. I was dying by mistake. I'd lived making mistakes. I'd been born by mistake.

Had my very birth been a mistake?

[Randomly copying a skill from hunter Yoo Suha.]

[Forming a skill card.]

I couldn't hear anything. Couldn't see anything.

But faint clusters of light flickered. It was as though fireflies were flitting about in front of my eyes. Some were bronze. Some were silver. And some... were gold.

It was fast.

The golden firefly flew swiftly. So swiftly that it seemed impossible to catch. There were countless bronze fireflies. They would be easy to catch. There were quite a few silver fireflies, too. I could probably catch those as well. But the color of the sun—the firefly flickering gold—there was only one.

[Please select a skill card.]

I reached for the one golden flame in this world, and...

[Selection complete.]

Caught it.

[Copying skill.]

And I died.

* * *

Activating skill.

Name, I Want to Be Like You.

Rank, S+.

Rule one.

Activates automatically when an enemy kills you.

Rule two.

Copies one of the skills of the enemy who killed you and makes it your own.

Rule three.

You cannot copy from the same opponent more than once.

Rule four.

The skill to be copied is chosen at random.

But you die.

* * *

Do you know what hell looks like?

Let me tell you.

For starters, there was no hellfire. There wasn't even ordinary fire. There was a gas stove, but it didn't have enough firepower to produce hellfire on its own. Oh, surprisingly, hell also had a small refrigerator. A narrow bed, too... And a secondhand television.

"Uh."

In short, it looked exactly like the room I lived in alone.

No, it simply was my room.

No matter how much I looked around, this wasn't hell. It was definitely my three-and-a-half-pyeong single room, made so appealing by its modest rent.

"Uh, uhh... Huh?"

I felt my head with one hand. It was fine. Just to make sure, I checked my face in my smartphone screen. A face that looked like someone had started sculpting Apollo and given up halfway through. In other words, moderately handsome and moderately ugly.

There wasn't a burn mark anywhere.

"... What? What happened?"

What really had happened?

'Did the Flame Emperor heal me and bring me back here?'

That was ridiculous bullshit.

But... I couldn't think of any other way to explain the situation. Perhaps the Flame Emperor was kinder than I'd thought. He might have been crazy without being a crazy psychopath, so perhaps he'd only pretended to kill me and actually let me live.

"We have breaking news."

Then had the Flame Emperor turned on that television before leaving, too?

"The Black Dragon Guild set out to conquer the Tower's fortieth floor."

"They confidently declared that this time, they would show us the strength of a top-tier guild, didn't they?"

"Unfortunately, they've returned empty-handed once again."

But no.

The Flame Emperor wasn't in my three-and-a-half-pyeong room. He hadn't merely left the television on and stepped out for a moment, either.

Instead...

"The number-one-ranked hunter!"

"The Flame Emperor has defeated the boss single-handedly once again!"

Instead, the Flame Emperor was frowning on the television screen.

2

"Hello, Flame Emperor!"

"Ah, yes. Hello..."

"You've set yet another record today. You're the only person to have set so many records, Flame Emperor. May we ask how you feel?"

"First, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop using that shitty title."

"Pardon?"

An English word appeared in capital letters in the corner of the broadcast.

LIVE.

I stared blankly up at the old television.

"First, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop using that shitty title."

"Pardon?"

"Flame Emperor. Why use that fucking nickname when I have a perfectly good name?"

Yoo Suha.

The world's number-one-ranked hunter. The protagonist of this era. The hero I'd envied was there. Yes. Perhaps simply saying he was "there" wasn't quite appropriate.

He had killed me, and I had died at his hands.

"This is impossible."

Even as I said it was impossible, my hand was already checking my smartphone. I looked at the date. It was yesterday's date.

My hand trembled.

I opened an online forum.

-Hey, the Flame Asshole's acting up again!

Here, too.

-Can't he watch his mouth when the whole world's watching?

There, too.

-The Flame Asshole's girlfriend revealed! They say he's dating the Saintess!

This site, that forum, social media, too.

Everything was the same. The exact posts I'd seen yesterday were appearing in real time. Even though they were definitely posts I'd seen yesterday, everyone else reacted as though they were seeing them for the first time.

"Ha..."

And yet there was exactly one thing that had changed.

-I want to be like the Flame Emperor too.

The comments I'd written were missing.

Of course they were. At this time yesterday, I would have been busily writing comments, but now I was simply sitting in a daze.

I truly had returned to yesterday.

"... Skill card. Open."

A golden card flared up before my eyes like a burst of flame.

[I Want to Be Like You(S+)]

A skill I'd checked so many times since yesterday that I'd memorized it. An S-rank ability I could never use. An extraordinarily shitty skill whose price was my own death.

But that wasn't all.

"My God."

Two.

There were two flames burning before me.

[I Want to Be Like You(S+)]

[Regressor's Clockwork Watch(EX)]

Two golden cards floated in the air.

'How?'

My heart pounded.

Regressor's Clockwork Watch. It was a skill I'd never seen before. It hadn't been there when I checked yesterday, or even before the Flame Emperor killed me. All I'd had was a useless trash skill. I hadn't had a skill with that name... let alone a golden one.

'How did this happen?'

I didn't know.

How had that skill become mine? What had made it mine? I didn't know. I couldn't understand it yet.

But...

'It's mine.'

I knew one thing for certain: this card was mine.

'Mine.'

And that it might be a card that could change my life.

I reached out and took the card.

I turned it over.

+

[Regressor's Clockwork Watch]

Rank: EX

Effect: Activates automatically upon death. Returns you to 24 hours before the moment of your death. Your memories and stats are preserved even after returning.

※However, the higher your hunter rank, the greater the penalty imposed.

※This skill was copied from hunter Yoo Suha.

+

Regression.

If I died, I would return twenty-four hours into the past.

"Ah..."

My head shuddered as though struck by lightning. My heart thundered.

I understood.

"This is the Flame Emperor's secret..."

How the Flame Emperor had become the world's number-one-ranked hunter.

How he had single-handedly defeated the previously unbeatable boss of the Tower's tenth floor.

And finally, why the Flame Emperor had been so certain that the Saintess would kill him.

At last, I understood.

["The Saintess really did try to kill me."]

["If I don't kill her first, she'll poison me to death tomorrow."]

That was what the Flame Emperor had said.

["I know everything."]

["I just know everything. I have a way of knowing everything."]

["And you don't need to know what that way is, buddy."]

He had actually been killed by the Saintess.

Just as he'd said, he'd been poisoned to death. Because he'd died, he'd returned twenty-four hours into the past. Then, grinding his teeth, he'd paid the Saintess back.

For revenge.

'And he killed me, too.'

I clenched my fist.

'Me, when I'd done nothing wrong! Just because I was in his way!'

He'd cut off my feet. Burned my head. Killed me. Toyed with me like a bug.

The interview was still going on on the cheap television.

"Finally, would you say a few words to our viewers?"

"Haa."

At the reporter's question, the Flame Emperor scratched the back of his head vigorously.

Yesterday, I'd seen a hero in that figure. Now I saw a psychopath. It didn't matter that he was ranked number one in the world. It didn't matter that countless people praised him as a hero. He was my enemy.

The Flame Emperor glared straight into the camera.

"Those who are going to make it will make it anyway."

I glared straight back at him.

"But even if you succeed later, don't mess with me."

I gripped the golden card tightly. The same card that man possessed. The skill I'd copied from the Flame Emperor. The Flame Emperor was ranked number one, and I was a bottom-feeder who didn't even make the rankings, but at this moment, the two of us stood on the same starting line.

"You'll die."

Now it was my turn to take revenge.